I have no idea why, but here I am. If I tried to tell you otherwise, I would be lying to you as well.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The Sound of Hell Breaking Loose

Here is the deal. At a youngish age you marry a man-boy you love. At least you think you love him. You know you feel different emotions towards him than you’ve ever felt for another boy. There was never the overwhelming sensation of an initial crush. In fact what grew between you grew slowly, methodically, at least on your side. But once it reached that point of recognition you knew this was unique. And to your young mind, unique feelings about a boy must equal love.

You feel terribly lucky because he also proves to be a good friend. You feel even luckier because he seems totally enthralled by you; even by the parts of you other boys quickly became disillusioned of. And there were lots of those parts, although most of them centered on your sharp tongue, your impatience over the general immaturity of boys and your quick disdain of any weakness you perceive in others. But he doesn’t see the negative parts, or if he does, they don’t bother him.

You continue to grow up alongside this man-boy. You start careers, buy a house, raise a family. Through the years the romance fades but never completely deserts you. Magazines tell you that you have sex far more frequently than most couples your age and married as long as you have been married. You consider this a good sign, but you absently wonder how long you have to be married before the nomenclature changes from ‘making love’ to ‘having sex’. Since you appear to be ahead in the game, you don’t worry too much. And the sex, well, if it isn’t heart-stopping and thrilling, it isn’t unpleasant either and you still enjoy the closeness and the intimacy the act requires.

There are times when you feel a frisson of desire for another man. Sometimes that frisson is quite strong. So strong you at least unconsciously consider whether you should sidestep your partner, whether temporarily or permanently and explore your options. But you are not that kind of person. To protect yourself you take steps to assure that you probably could not act on those feelings even if you wanted to, because they would not be reciprocated. You let yourself go. Just a little. Enough to declare to the world that you are not in play, but not enough to cause concern in the man-boy. You suspect he suffers similar experiences, but instinctively trust he is no more likely to act on those desires than you are.

You and your man-boy, now far more man than boy, become comfortable, complacent, and totally absorbed in the daily rigmarole of life. None of which are bad things to be are they? You don’t talk a great deal, but on occasion you and he find yourselves engrossed in an extensive and wide ranging conversation about issues that are important to you both. And those occasions feed your soul. Remind you that you made the right choice. Remind you why you married this man.

One subject you rarely discuss is sex. You have it. Exactly as you have been having it for the last several years. But you don’t talk about it. You don’t discuss your evolving fantasy lives. You don’t discuss what type of pornography or erotica the other finds interesting. You don’t discuss burgeoning desires, risks you are willing to take or activities currently outside your comfort zone that you think you would like to move inside.

Then something quite strange and wonderful occurs. You get old. Well, not old exactly, but definitely middle aged (as long as we are not talking about precisely the middle of your ultimate age - you don’t plan on living to be 102.) Weird things start happening to your body. As weird as what happened to your body at the beginning of your sexual journey. And those weird things affect your mind. How you think and how you feel about sex.

Your kids are grown. Your body is back under your control. At least it stops going wacky every few months as it decides whether to go through the process one more time and push an egg out the door, even though it has been years since those eggs had an open path to their ultimate destination. Your body settles into a new phase that doesn’t require near as much thinking, planning or scheduling. Now your mind has time to ponder. And time to listen to your body. It does.

You determine that the status quo can not continue. You give this a great deal of thought. Should you change partners for the rest of the dance? Should you give up entirely on your unrequited passions? Should you be demanding, take control, insist that what happens beneath the sheets must change? This last option is easy to dismiss since it is the opposite of what you are seeking beneath those sheets.

While you are busy trying to figure this out you are also sending out signals. The signals aren’t explicit but they are picked up by the man’s radar. Then you realize that your radar is picking up new signals from his direction as well.

Suddenly you both realize your signals are on the same bandwidth. After many, many years of meandering down paths that sometimes run parallel and sometimes are wildly divergent, your paths suddenly collide. The desires roiling suddenly bubble to the top then spill over. And you and this man you married such a very long time ago suddenly realize that your most intimate thoughts and dreams mirror and compliment his. It dawns on both of you that something, some infinitesimal and unconscious yin spoke to the other’s yang all those years ago, then lay buried right under the surface until the time was right to reveal yourself to each other.

3 comments:

lulu, this is absolutely beautiful. followed you from your rg "sex in the library" story. great writing all around, so true to life, so, so breathtakingly, achingly real. these phrases will haunt.--louisa